Sight
by agesofaquarius
Summary: He could see shadows, could see the light that made them, and he could see her. Her frame was accented by the fireplace as they sat in silence; her nose in a book and his mind hundreds of years back in time. He couldn't see two weeks before, and he couldn't see two years ahead, but he could see five feet in front of him and that's all that mattered. AU Where Desmond Lives.
1. I See Shadows

**Chapter One: I See Shadows**

He didn't feel pain, not really.

His nerve endings were fried before pain could even be introduced. Skin blackened from the thermal energy passing between his weak atoms, and he was connected to the orb like a leaf is connected to a tree.

And then a strong breeze came through to break that connection.

He fell slowly, floating through the pressurized air until he rested soundly on the stone ground.

He saw bright lights, and believe them to be stars.

He fell asleep under them, his fingertips numb as he reached for them.

..

It was the crackle of the fireplace that he woke up to. Shadows danced across the ceiling and he missed the stars. Wood split and fractured as the fire covered it, kindled it for warmth. A soothing form of destruction. It blocked out the draft from the window across the room on the right.

There was a sink underneath it, and a leaky faucet dripped every three seconds. Two meters from the sink was a door, and one pair of shoes.

He wiggled his toes, and felt the wool socks keeping them war as well as the blanket on top of him. He sat up.

The shadows of the fire seemed to jump at him, chasing after him but they couldn't get past the barrier of the wall. His shoulders relaxed, but they were still stiff. His tongue felt twice the size of his mouth, stiff as well.

He didn't try to stand, already feeling dizzy from sitting up, but he looked around. The cabin was barely big enough to hold what it did. He was in one of the corners, adjacent from the fireplace. The small kitchenette was to his right, across the room, and the only exit was beside it.

There was a small recliner and a table with two chairs taking up the corner beside the fireplace. Another blanket was haphazardly tossed over the recliner, and a pile of books was stacked beside the splotchy fabric.

He wouldn't be alone for long, he mused, as there was bound to be someone else to come back for those books. And so, he sat in the bed, racking his brain for answers

Where was he?

Why was he here?

He couldn't remember much, just the strange taste of electricity on his swollen tongue and the smell of metal and stone.

He could remember the lives of men that were not him.

Altair, the man who walked as he wanted before subcoming to the shadows as a Master; Ezio, a man thirsty for revenge but then poisoned by its never-ending hunger; Haytham and Connor, a father and his son who tried to kill the other over their differences, before realizing what they had in common.

He could remember all these memories, all these lives lived so long ago, but he couldn't remember _him_. Couldn't remember why his right arm tingled or why he wanted to be high up to see the surrounding area.

 _Get to a vantage point. Have the upper hand of your enemies_.

That's what it was telling him, and his left wrist felt bare without the familiar rub of leather. Instead, all he found was a design of dark ink that only raised more questions.

The crunch of snow outside the door caught his attention just before the door opened. He had no time to hide or lay back down, to give the illusion he was still asleep. The person had their back to him, dragging in a tarp of chopped wood. The wind blew in snow and the tarp dragged it in as well. He watched them shake out their boots and dust off their jacket, before turning to him.

She looked at him, her tan skin darker in the shadows but er eyes were a smooth hazel. A dust of freckles were sprinkled over her nose and across the apples of her cheeks. Her long black hair was pulled back into a braid that was thrown across her left shoulder.

There was a hunting knife holstered on her right thigh but no other weapons to make her a threat. Not that he could defend himself at the moment, anyway.

"It's about time you woke up," she says, her voice raspy from the harsh cold air outside the cabin. There's a trickle of sweat down her cheek as she sheds her thick coat and hangs in on the back of a chair.

He opens his mouth to speak, but his throat is dryer than his sarcasm and he goes into a coughing fit. Doubling over, his chest constricting and contracting with each hack, she comes to his side and offers a ladle of melted snow. It was cool on his tongue, and the ache in his throat ebbed away.

"You've been out for almost a week, you need to put fluid in your body."

He nods and gulps from the ladle, but she makes him wait for the second.

"You'll throw it back up if you drink too fast. Let it settle."

He felt the nausea but it slowed and cooled just as his throat did. She offered him another ladle a few moments later. He sipped it slowly, watching her kick off her boots beside the other pair at the door. Her pair were much smaller. Taking a few blocks of the chopped wood, she sets them into the fireplace and the flame crackles and hisses at the snow as it melts into the kindle.

She grabs one of the chairs and pulls it to the side of the bed, a bucket of melted snow at her feet for them to drink from.

"Do you know where you are?" she asks him, and he shakes his head, throat still too sore to speak. Her lips purse as she sits back, arms folding over her chest. "About 80 miles south of the Canadian border. There's a little village, Copenhagen, a few miles up the road."

He nods, drinking the water before offering her the ladle. She takes it and drinks her own gulp. When she offers it back, he declines with a raised hand and she drops it back in the bucket.

"Do you know who you are?"

The question doesn't surprise him, but it still catches him off guard. He looks at her, deep brown to smooth hazel, before shaking his head again.

Her lips purse again, but they seem to be more in annoyance than anything else.

"Well, I'm going to call you John, because I don't know who you are and there's no way to get you to a hospital in this blizzard."

"The date?" he asks, works broken and cracked from the nonuse of his vocal chords. Her eyebrows raise up, but then fall back down.

"December twenty-seventh, twenty-twelve. You just missed Christmas. I cooked rabbit."

She stands and moves the chair slightly, picking up the bucket of melted snow to put it on the small counter beside the sink.

 _You did it. You saved them._

The voice shocked him. He looked to her, but found her back still to him, and the voice did not match with her own. He looked toward the fireplace, and the shadows danced more but none of them spoke.

He closed his eyes and rubbed at his head, confused by the sudden sound.

 _Well done, my friend. Well done._

There was a different voice, this one flowy and with a thick accent.

His head. It was coming from his head.

"You okay, John?" she asks, pulling him from the spiraling thoughts. He looks up at her, confused. She holds a white box in her hands, her hunting knife resting on top of it.

"What's that?"

She sits back down in the chair, setting the box and knife on the edge of the bed near his legs.

"I need to change your dressings."

He went to ask what she meant, but when she reached for his right arm, he saw what she meant. It wasn't until she began to unravel the bandage around the appendage that he saw the extent of the damage. At first it looked as a simple burn near the top of the dressings, but the more she unraveled, the pinky-tan skin turned grayish and the same consistency as leather. And then the strange black lines began, standing out like a circuit board against the dark gray skin.

Now he understand why he couldn't feel the gauze on his skin - the nerves had been fried all the way down to the muscle. He could barely wiggle his fingers.

The dressings had faint dead skin broken off around the threads weaving back and forth into each other, and the splotches of scabs and dark blood bled through the gauze.

"I'm surprised you can move your fingers," she comments, opening the box and pulling out fresh sterile gauze pads. She sets them to the side and produces a bottle of blue colored liquid. It's soothing to the touch when she applies it to the peeling skin. "It almost looked like an electrical burn, but there's no exit wound, just entry. I thought I may have to amputate it, but blood flow is good and the skin is healing slowly. It will take some time, and leave a nasty scar, but you may not need to lose it."

He watches her cover the surface area of his arm with the goo, and then she loosely presses the sterile gauze to his arm and wraps up again with rolling bandage, using the knife to cut it once she's used as much as she needs.

"You know a lot about burns," he comments, eyes still settled on the bandage. His arm shouldn't look like that. Shouldn't look like a dark gray with those strange black lines that worked up his arm from his fingertips.

"I'm an EMT. House fires are more common than you think."

He takes the reply with a nod.

"I never got your name."

She closes the first aid kit and puts her hunting knife back in the holster on her leg.

"Nina."

It rolled off her tongue and onto the tip of his.

 _Nina, don't follow me! I can't stay here any longer. I can't be what they want._

The voice was his own, not one of the strange ones taking over in his head. He looks at her, trying to find some familiarity in her features, but the smooth hazel was cold and relentless, just like the blizzard out the cabin.

"How did you find me?" he asks when she goes to put the first aid back in a cabinet and goes to curl up in the shabby recliner near the fire place.

"You found me," she replies, wrapping the throw blanket around her body and angling herself to be facing the door. It was as if she didn't blink. "I was out checking traps, and you called toward me, half dead by then. You were bleeding pretty harsh from your arm. I got you inside and cleaned you up. You passed out during me bandaging you."

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "I'm not surprised you don't remember. Must have taken a bad blow to the head. Fell off a cliff or something. That burn though…"

Her eyes don't touch him, they just stay on the door, listening to the whistling of snow and wind outside.

"I've never seen a burn like that before."

 _She is trustworthy_.

The voice was deep and stoic, the quietest of the three in his head. The thickly accented one seemed to hum some strange tune, almost like it was being created all at once.

He looked toward the window above the leaky sink and instead of seeing a blizzard outside, he found the rolling hills of Tuscany beckoning him. He could taste the sun on his swollen tongue and smell the sweet scent of fresh grapes.

He blinks, and all he sees is the flicker of shadows on the wall trying to jump him and the dark blizzard outside the cabin. The draft peaks through the warmth, before disappearing again.

"What are you doing here?" he asks her, looking toward her, only to find her eyes closed and hard face relaxed.

He sits for a few moments, and at no reply, he eases himself back into the bed and rolls onto his side, facing toward the wall. It blocks out the shadows and the draft, his toes warm from the double layer and the closeness of the fireplace. He won't sleep, but he will rest as he thinks.

"Trying to find a purpose," he hears her whisper sometime into the night. Looking back at her, their eyes meet. Smooth hazel is suddenly rigid with past and mystery, begging for answers to a question she doesn't even know.

He says nothing. Simply turns back and lets her take the silence as his reply.

 _Aren't we all?_


	2. I See Blades

**Chapter Two: I See Blades**

It was when he opened his eyes that he realized he had fallen asleep. Nina was walking around, her feet silent against the wooden floor. He sits up, arms limp against his straight legs. There was the faintest pull of his burnt skin against the gauze and he readied himself for the pain but felt nothing.

"Sleep well?" Nina asks.

He swings his legs over the bed and rests his feet on the ground. It's cold, but the wool socks ease the chill. He doesn't stand yet, just stares past her out at the sunny, snowy scenery through the one window above the sink.

He can hear Achilles' voice in the distance, yelling at Connor to chop more wood to keep the Davenport Mansion warm.

The mansion was nowhere near. At least three hundred or so miles to the small village on the coast of Massachusetts from where he currently was in upstate New York.

Well, at least he remembered where he was. What he was doing there, was another question on its own.

"It was fine," he replies. Slowly, he stands and while his knees are weak and his ankles threaten to buckle, he takes easy steps across to the kitchenette. He drinks from the bucket of melted snow, her eyes on him.

"Good to hear," she comments and walks over to the door to slip her feet into her boots and shoulder her jacket. "I'm going to check some traps. The road has about two feet of snow. Won't be able to shovel out my truck until it gets a little warmer."

He looks at her, looks at the second pair of boots. They must be his.

"Can I join?" he asks and she hesitates.

"Only one jacket."

It was a fair enough reasoning. He would just be useless weight, anyways. He was weak and only had one good arm – and it wasn't his dominant arm, either.

He nods and goes to sit back on the bed, legs crossed under him.

"There's a couple books if you get bored," she mentions, motioning toward the stack as she wraps a scarf around her neck. "Oh, and this."

She picks up a strange leather brace from on top of the table and hands it to him.

"It was strapped to your left arm when you found me. Don't know what it is, but I figured it'd jog your memory."

When he takes it from her, there's a connection and each are shocked by the strange electricity. Nina pulls away quickly.

She says nothing more and quickly leaves the cabin.

He spins the brace in his hands, feels the worn leather and touches the metal sheath. Near the edge of stitching, are two letters pressed into the material.

 _DM_

There's the smallest button on the inside of the brace, built into the sheath. A blade, with small flecks of dried blood still on the tip, shoots out. As soon as his finger is taken off the button, the blade slides back in.

He does this over and over again, listening to the _shink_ of the metal as it slides in and out, in and out.

It's familiar, comforting almost. Like the touch of a close friend after a bad day.

 _This is your gauntlet, son. You will learn how to use it and you will never take it off._

Assassins were born by the blade and killed by the blade.

He could remember watching his uncle cut the umbilical cord of his cousin with his own blade. And he could remember the last Master, gone mad from Templar poison and begging for the mercy of death. He wasn't even thirteen and he'd already seen a complete life cycle.

Things came rushing back to him, but he couldn't distinguish his own memories from the men he heard in his head. He couldn't piece together what went where. He couldn't piece together correct time lines. Did he die before he was born? Did he answer questions before they were ever asked?

He knew Nina. Or, at least, he once knew Nina. Maybe not even this Nina, although it wasn't a very common name. And while her rigid hazel eyes didn't match the ones he saw in his memory, the ones tear filled and narrowed in anger – there were similarities.

He knew the Farm, knew the people that he once called family. The training, more rigorous than that of Army Ranger boot camp. He could remember what caused the scar that slashed across his upper and lower lips. He could remember the crazy winter storms and the constant craving of warmth as he stayed close to his mother and cousins while his father ran around, making sure everyone in the compound was safe.

He could remember his hatred for the blade.

 _You will never take it off_.

How wrong he man had been. He _did_ take it off. Why and when and how, he wasn't sure. That piece hadn't been sewed back into place yet.

Yet he felt bare without the leather rubbing his skin. Yet he yearned to feel the sensation of warm life's blood rushing down his wrist as his blade struck through the atoms that made up his enemy's body.

He pulled back, body seizing as he watched a shadow pass over him. It was still outside of the cabin. It didn't feel right. He looked back down at the brace.

He didn't feel right without it on, even if he couldn't remember why.

He slipped on the brace, tightened the leather straps until it felt snug and would not slide off. His wrist pressed against the button as he pulled his hand back and the blade unsheathed away from the brace. As he relaxed his hand back down, it disappeared.

Standing, slowly, he shuffled his feet to the door. It took him a few minutes to gather his boots and walk over to the chair in order to pulled them over his socks and lace them up. He didn't see the shadow again, but the unease did not falter. Once the last lace was knotted, he grabbed the throw blanket off the recliner and shuffled his feet out of the cabin.

The snow was to his knees, but soft and fluffy and gave way easy enough. It clumped on his jeans and slowly soaked through, chilling him to the bone, but he did a full perimeter check of the cabin. There was a bird resting on a nearby tree branch, cleaning its feathers.

 _Crunch_

He turns as quickly as he can, wrist moving and the blade flicks outward. Nothing. He could see where he had broken through the snow, leaving almost a perfect circle around the cabin.

The trees were covered in a thick layer of soft snow, and while the sun felt warm on his pink cheeks, the wind chill was enough to make his eyes burn.

 _The top. Be high. See the area. See your enemies._

He shuffled toward the nearest large tree, an oak that was well over two hundred years old.

Amazing how something so large could have started out as an acorn a squirrel buried and forgot about.

Dropping the blanket around from his shoulders, he climbed the heavy trunk, stopping every few branches to catch his breath. It was almost like an automatic response, like he was on autopilot. He knew exactly where to put each foot and each hand. He knew where to grab and where to push and when a limb gave the ever smallest give, he changed his position to a stronger branch and continued. Soon he was at the top, out of breath and the bandages on his right arm torn, but he could see the tops of the tallest trees and the cabin look as a speck under him.

Nina's trail through the snow could be seen.

It light up as bright gold path, her footsteps marked in his mind. The rest of the world around him was a mixture of dark gray and blue. There were a few figures lit up white, but the animals were skittish once his feet hit the ground again.

One of his knees gave and he had to catch himself from going down into the snow. He'd never get back up then.

It took him a few minutes, but when he finally had the blanket back around his shoulders and his knees were willing to work again, he took off down the golden-lit path of Nina's footsteps. They curved down a hill and followed along the bank of a creek, barely a meter and a half wide and a half meter deep.

He found the shortest distance from his side to the other, found a sturdy rock to use as a step that wouldn't give underneath him, and moved across to the other side.

That's when he saw the other tracks.

They were marked in the faintest of a pink glow, and the closer they got to Nina's gold path, the darker the pink got until it was a blood red.

Too big to be a fox or a stray dog.

 _Wolf._

The deep stern voice spoke to him, and the unnatural sense of tracking animals could be explained to that one extra voice that spoke when he did.

He walked quickly but with light steps, not wanting to attract more of the pack. Where there was one, there was two or three more. One distracted while the rest came up behind for a quick and easy kill. Nina would be like a rabbit, falling right into their trap.

At the top of the hill that he climbed, quicker than usual thanks to Nina's trail breaking through the deep snow, he could see where Nina's gold trail finished and her golden body shined. The tracks cut off to the side but he could still see the wolf coming around the back, and another three banking around to the other side.

Nina was kneeled over a trap, loosening the cogs to free a dead squirrel.

He couldn't yell, then that would make them just rush her and there'd be no time to stop them. He continued on the trail she had, sticking as low as he could. The blanket, while warm, limited his movement and he dropped it near the top of the hill. He knew if he flicked his wrist the sound of the blade would alert the wolves and it would futile. He would have to wait until the right moment.

Nina stood, hooked the squirrel onto a latch on her belt where two others hung, and turned. She saw the wolf first, and froze. It crept closer, and its ears fell back on his head as his lips pulled back into a low growl.

Nina's knees bent, her body dropping and to make herself look bigger. She felt her hunting knife in her right hand, her own growl vibrating in her throat. She saw him, crouching in the deep snow and moving as quickly as he could.

Their red figures stood out against the white and gray-blue world, but not as bright as her white-gold form.

The wolf pounced, and Nina ducked, catching its back legs to flip it, sending it meters away and whimpering in the snow. The other three jumped to its rescue, one going straight at Nina while the others barked and snapped at him.

He took off, no longer worried about staying unseen.

One of them went running towards him, and as it leaped for a throat shot, his wrist flicked and the blade slid out the sheath, ringing in the air, and his hand came around to meet the wolf's neck. It met with a crunch and a slick entry wound. He watched the light go out and continued the rest of the cycle, catching the wolf to let it lie on the snow and not plop sickeningly.

 _The cycle shall now begin again_.

He had to shake it out of his head and focus on Nina. She had two wolves on her now, and she wasn't letting them get behind her. The third went after him, trying to grab the opening it saw but he bypassed it, and when the wolf went past him, he dug the blade into its throat as well. It crumbled near the other.

Nina cursed loudly as a pair of jaws latched onto her arm and didn't let go. The bone was surely broken, especially with the amount of force the wolf had in its jaw. She didn't fight it, knowing it would only make it worse.

She would rather keep her arm than lose it.

With one firm swing, Nina embedded her hunting knife into the eye of the wolf. It yelped as it released her arm, jumping back and twitching around, trying to now see with only one eye. He took it out with a deep stab to the spine, and it collapsed into the snow.

The fight was evident in the snow, between his quick steps and the wolves' tracks that would soon be covered with the next blizzard.

As the last wolf attacked Nina, John stepped in front of her, his left arm held up. The sharp teeth could be felt through the thick leather of his brace, but Nina stabbed the wolf in the neck, and the wolf's jaw gave away soon enough.

The two stood near each other, their breathes making clouds in the cold around them.

"Glad I left the cabin?" he asks, almost smugly. The situation became lighter in the thick air.

Nina exhaled sharply, a smile ghosting on her lips, but it turned into a grimace as the cold began to hit her injured skin.

"C'mon. I need to clean this and get it bandaged," Nina says, drawing her left arm close against her chest and keeping pressure on the wound. He bends down to pick up her blood soaked knife and holds it tight, just in case more wolves are around.

"Lead the way," he says, taking up the rear of the two as they make their way back through the snow.

His vision returns to the gray blue it had been, Nina's form now a bright white instead of gold. The wolves once red forms now lay a dull gray like they are a part of the surrounding environment. He picks up the blanket from the snow and places it around Nina's shoulders.

She looks at him with momentarily surprise before they continue on. Once at the small creek, Nina kneels and dunks her arm into the cold water. He watches her, watches the grimace cover her face and the pain flash in her eyes, before the skin grows numb and the pink water continues to slowly flow away. After half a minute, Nina pulls her arm out of the water and looks at the now-pale skin.

The blood flow has slowed, but it still trickles into the snow. She uses the blanket to apply pressure and they linger on.

Back in the cabin, Nina goes about disinfecting her bite wound, while he walks around the cabin, keeping eyes to the woods. His right arm tingles suddenly, and he turns at the sound of the wind blowing particularly hard.

A woman, dressed in a strange pale-blue garb stands in the shade of a tree. The same oak tree he had climbed before finding Nina.

His right hand fists, and his left arm tenses, ready to unsheathe the blade in his brace, but she's gone in a small cyclone of snow flurries.

When he takes shelter in the cabin as well, John finds Nina laying on the small bed, propped against the wall with the first aid kit sitting near her legs and her left arm thickly bandaged and eyes closed. There is no blood showing through the dressing, so he does not worry about waking her up.

John sits in the recliner and inspects his leather brace. There are teeth marks pressed into the material, but it did not puncture.

His eyes raise up and settle on the almost smothered fire. He throws two logs in and it gradually builds back up.

With a flick of his wrist, the blade extends once again, and he wipes the flaking blood from it on the leg of his pants.


End file.
